Toronto – The Mod Club was home to two of 2010’s most critically acclaimed bands Tuesday night in the form of Brooklyn’s Suckers and Portland’s Menomena. I was primarily there for Suckers, a band off the French Kiss label that first captured my affection with their ep and then cemented my love for them with their excllent debut effort Wild Smile.
Seeing as how I have been going on and on about Suckers for the better part of this year, you would think I would have gone extra early to ensure I caught the entire show. NOPE. Trying to time it so I arrived just before they started, I misjudged their start time and as I entered, I can hear them playing. Horrified, I asked the door girl when they had started, I had missed either two or three songs. Sick. Which brings me to think, what are some of the worse things that can happen when approaching a concert venue? Here’s a list:
1. You forgot your ticket
2. The band is already playing
3. You have a pair of tickets, but your friend is late and your cell phone is dying and the band is about to go on
4. You don’t have a ticket, but your friend is nowhere to be found/inside and not answering phone + band is playing
5. The Nazis attack
When I did get in, I was immediately shocked at how packed the show was. Despite my love for this band, I haven’t seen much press for Suckers so it pleased me to see a large audience for them. Either that or Menomena has a bunch of keeners for fans.
The short half hour set was impressive and gave the fans a nice taste of what the Suckers are about: strong vocal harmonies layered over carefully arranged music. Lead singer Quinn Walker has a great voice and he wasn’t shy about using it, occasionally delivering vocals in pitches usually reserved for Mariah Carey (specially for the song Before Your Birthday Ends). Set ender It Gets Your Body Movin featured a horn section and an insanely talented whistling display. It’s a shame they were the openers, as I enjoyed the suckers live performance quite a bit. Hopefully next time they’ll play a proper/longer show.
Suckers – A Mind I Knew by nmemagazine
I didn’t know much about Menomena before the show. I didn’t even know how to pronounce their name til Monday. If you are confused about it, it’s like the LL Cool J song
Something like a phenomena
Something like a phenomena
And then take off the p. Having looked up the band before their set, I found out that they were on the Barsuk label. Gary loves Barsuk labelled artists like a fat kid loves cake so I’ll hand it over to him for this portion.
Menomena pretty much had all the genres that I can think of covered. There’s a metal song, some sing alongs, one song with piano rift intro that sounded like Moby’s Porcelain, and yet another the piano is used as a counter to a bassoon that had a Peter and the Wolf kind of charm (I’d like to go home is the name?). It’s not that I don’t like their music. I think there’s a song called This will all End One Day that I found very good. Although it’s very uneven throughout the evening, the show was energetic.
Despite not hearing one single track of theirs before the show, I enjoyed Menomena, I thought they did a good job building up each track with layers of keyboard, guitar, trumpet or whatever it was they were using. Their tracks definitely varied in style, as one minute, you would think you were listening to a Chicago style lounge band and the next minute you were at a 80s new age disco hall. I found the large variety of musical styles engaging, but at the same time I was unable to fully delve into the show. Maybe I need consistency, I don’t know why.
Before we finish off this review, let us talk about concert etiquette. More specifically, let’s talk about wooooing. We get it, you are enjoying a show. You want to let it be known, so you wooo. Once a song is okay, but there is only one person allowed to do mulitiple wooooos Ina short period of time, and that’s this guy:
If you are not this guy, please be respectful. There are many people around you at a close range, the last thing they want to hear every 30 seconds is you high pitched impression of a high school cheerleader.
So overall, pleasant night at the Mod Club. I look forward to the next time the Suckers are in town.
Menomena – TAOS by cityslang
